


Spirit of Pawnee

by smilebackwards



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leslie turns her laptop so everyone can see her Outlook calendar for the month. It’s consistently double booked with color-coded budget and planning meetings and there’s a recurring Friday task to steal or deface at least five books from the Pawnee Public Library. December 12th has an all-day meeting with the subject <em>The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee Returns! :D</em> The next five days have red-coded meetings subjected <em>The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee Has Not Been Returned D:</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Spirit of Pawnee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprat/gifts).



> If you didn't watch the episode "The Camel" or don't remember the Spirit of Pawnee murals, this will probably make more sense if you view these photos first!
> 
> [Spirit of Pawnee](http://parksandrecreation.wikia.com/wiki/Pawnee_City_Hall?file=SpiritOfPawneeLarge.jpg)   
> [Parks and Rec Department's Spirit of Pawnee](http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120906064521/parksandrecreation/images/2/26/The_Camel_Mural.png)

“Emergency meeting! Conference room, everyone! Hustle, hustle, hustle!” Leslie yells, chopping her hand into her opposite palm. 

“Good hustle,” Leslie says, approximately ten minutes later, after she’s physically dragged Tom and April through the door and Donna straggles in with her 40oz, industrial-sized Monday coffee. “Now, you know how Michelangelo did two tiny statues of the _David_ before he created the actual hot masterpiece?” 

“I’m not sure if that’s actually true or just an episode of Leverage, but sure,” Ben says.

“Well. Yes. Regardless,” Leslie says. “The renowned artist who painted _The Spirit of Pawnee_ mural did a smaller version as a template. It was done on a canvas of stretched buffalo hide and I very generously loaned it to the Parks department of Cincinnati, Ohio for display purposes.” Leslie smiles smugly, imagining the mural surrounded by tasteful spotlighting and hushed, awed tourists. “They practically begged for it.”

Donna shakes her head slowly behind Leslie’s back and does a surprisingly comprehensible miming of how Leslie shoved the painting on a Cincinnati official at a conference reception dinner after shotgunning six lemon drops and yelling “Pawnee rules!” from on top of the open bar.

Leslie turns her laptop so everyone can see her Outlook calendar for the month. It’s consistently double booked with color-coded budget and planning meetings and there’s a recurring Friday task to steal or deface at least five books from the Pawnee Public Library. December 12th has an all-day meeting with the subject _The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee Returns! :D_ The next five days have red-coded meetings subjected _The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee Has Not Been Returned D:_

“While I, of course, salute their appreciation of Pawnee culture,” Leslie says, “They have exceeded the 280 day period for which I agreed to loan _The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee._ They’ve also ignored 36 separate emails I sent them regarding its safe return. The last 22 of which I wrote in all capslock. To convey their importance. So now we clearly need to go get it back by force. I will require two of you to flank me at all times. They don’t take you seriously in any capital city if you don’t bring a posse.”

“Leslie,” Ben says, slowly. “The capital of Ohio is Columbus.”

“Ben. Sweetheart. I know the capital of our neighboring state,” Leslie laughs. “Excuse me for just one second.” Picking up her laptop, she turns into the corner and types ‘capital of Ohio’ into AltaVista. “Crap,” Leslie says, searching Wikipedia for Cincinnati and committing three pages of scrolling to short-term memory. She crooks the laptop into her elbow and smooths down her blazer with one hand. Then she turns back around and attacks Ben’s mouth with her own.

“Wait, what were we talking about?” Ben asks, dazed, when Leslie releases him. He opens and closes his portfolio, glances at the yellow transcription pad where April started out with a surprisingly professional _12/17/12 Leslie’s Emergency Meeting_ before 30 seconds elapsed, the next line deteriorated to _Not an emergency_ and April used her disgusting but foolproof “I have to go change my tampon” excuse to leave the meeting.

Ann gives Leslie a thumbs up and mouths, “Nice job.”

“Damn, girl. Get it,” Donna says, proudly.

“Thank you,” Leslie says. “And that was nothing. I’ve successfully given Ben affection amnesia for a period of three minutes and fifteen seconds. I mistakenly opened his limited edition Star Wars Yoda action figure blister pack. Afterwards, I blamed it on the neighbor kid. I saw him steal a King Size Kit Kat at the grocery store the Sunday before,” Leslie defends at Ann’s disbelieving look. “He was no innocent.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Ben says.

“Oh, damn it,” Leslie says, grabbing Ben by his tie and kissing him again.

“Sorry, can you repeat what you just said?” Ben asks.

“You have a super power,” Tom tells Leslie. “Can I market it? Please let me market it.”

Leslie clears her throat, deliberate, and kicks Tom in the shin. “We were discussing the necessity of a trip to Cincinnati, the third most populous city in Ohio after Cleveland and it’s capital of Columbus. Volunteers? Ben and Ann? Your enthusiasm is appreciated,” Leslie says, before anyone has a chance to offer. “Meeting adjourned.”

“Oh, Leslie, I don’t know,” Ann says. “I have a double shift at the hospital tomorrow.”

“But you volunteered!” Leslie protests.

“I didn’t volunteer,” Ann clarifies. “You volunteered me.”

“Huh,” Leslie says. “That’s not the way I remember it. Come on, Ann, this is a road trip! It’ll be fun. I have candy necklaces and Red Vines.”

“Oh, well sure. If there’s Red Vines,” Ann says. 

“Yay!” Leslie cheers. “We’ll take my car. I already have the audio book of _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ queued up in the CD player.”  


-

Ten chapters later finds Leslie, Ann and Ben in the Cincinnati Town Hall.

Ron’s counterpart, Bob Klegman, clearly warned of their impending arrival by someone in Pawnee, has whipped cream saturated waffles available when they arrive. Leslie hesitates for the thirty seconds it takes her to inhale them before noticing that the mural isn’t anywhere in evidence.

“Where’s _The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee?_ ” she says, accusingly.

Klegman hesitates. “It’s…it was so…historical and…vivid. All the departments wanted a chance to display in their offices,” he says. “We’re not sure who ended up with it.”

Leslie takes this for a challenge, disrupting half the local Cincinnati government as she turns over their offices in search of the mural. “If the mural is in this building, Leslie will find it,” Ben says, as he and Ann follow behind, righting the spilled desk organizers and overturned chairs Leslie leaves in her wake. “She’s like a bloodhound for all things from Pawnee. We took a weekend trip to Chicago last month. When we went out to dinner she ordered the house sirloin and identified the corn vegetable side as being grown in Katik County. Apparently the cornfields there border the Sweetums Factory and high volumes of concentrated sugar have seeped directly into soil, leaving a distinct aftertaste.”

In the end, they find _The Tiny Spirit of Pawnee_ facing the wall in the basement boiler room. Damp has leaked onto it, smearing the green and red of the first two boxcars down across the terrible caricatures of the Chinese laborers. 

“Well,” Anne tries, “Now it’s even more like the full size version. That one gets defaced all the time.” 

Leslie picks up the mural and dabs at it with the corner of her sweater. “It’s a horrible painting,” she says. “But it’s Pawnee’s history. I like to think it shows how far we’ve come.”

Ben puts an arm around her. “I’ll put it against the heating vent in my office. Dry it out,” he says. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

-

“What are you doing?” April asks, when she finds Ben in the Parks conference room during Friday lunch hour. He’s staring at the knee surgery video April contributed to the department’s own Spirit of Pawnee mural, mesmerized. 

“I was looking for somewhere to hang this,” Ben says, turning the canvas in his hands face out toward April. 

“That’s the painting,” April says. “But it was destroyed.”

“Luckily, I know a great art restorer," Ben says. "He almost refused on moral grounds, but I told him I needed it for my girl.”

April gives him a look, deadpan.

“And then he refused again, so I paid him a lot of money,” Ben admits.

April helps him hang it up beside the department’s Spirit of Pawnee, with Tom’s shapes and Ann’s dogs, Donna’s Jesus Greg Kinnear. 

Ben looks at them side by side. The Spirit of Pawnee locomotive chugs inexorably toward the screaming Wamapoke on the tracks. The Pawnee Bread Factory burns silently. “I’m honestly not sure which one is more horrifying.” 

“What are you guys looking at?” Leslie asks, stepping into the conference room, lunch bag swinging from her wrist. She stops short, staring.

“I had it fixed,” Ben says.

Leslie kisses him, quick and hard, and turns back to take in both murals. The Irish whiskey bottles are a more vivid green than ever. April’s hamster wheel turns slowly. “Beautiful,” Leslie says.

Ben smiles at her. “Beautiful,” he agrees.


End file.
